by Mark Powell
As soon as John stepped from the car into the frozen morning he knew he’d made a mistake. Driving from their condo in Pigeon Forge first into the national park and then down to Cades Cove he had watched the temperature fall steadily while the snow that lay in occasional drifts gradually came to overtake entire roadside banks. It was cold in town, but it was at least ten degrees colder here in the valley. The boys were in heavy ski coats and Laurie was zipped into some sort of nylon zero-degree spacesuit. But that didn’t change the fact John had made a less than wise decision.
He stood by the picnic shelter and tried to clear his head, tried to recall what exactly Tess had said that morning when—
“Dad?” Wally’s door hung open, his breath a silver fish. “Are you gonna let us out?”
“Sit still for one minute for me, all right?”
“We want to walk around.”
“We will.”
“Can we go down to that creek we drove past?”
“Just shut your door for one minute, all right? I don’t want your sister to wake up.”
“She’s already awake.” And then John heard her, the swish of her bundled self, and then the first itch of cry.
“I think she wants out,” Wally said.
“Okay.”
“She’s crying, Dad.”
“I hear her.”
“She’s crying.”
“I got her. Thanks.”
*
He put Laurie in the BabyBjörn and made Wally and Daniel hold hands, an act that Wally was more and more finding not only unnecessary but insulting. He had a junior ranger badge and guidebook bought at the park store that listed the flora and fauna of the mountains, and while he knew the bears were hibernating he felt certain they could see a deer if only Daniel would be quiet. So that became the running theme of the morning, Daniel and his noise, Daniel and his coughing, his stepping on sticks or dragging his feet through the wet leaves. Wally shushing him until Daniel was in tears and John had to say something to Wally and then he was in tears, too. Laurie, for her part, was in some sort of body heat coma, tucked inside seven layers of synthetic North Face warmth.
They walked down to the river where beneath the skim ice the water ran shallow and clear over the bedded rocks. Snow lay on the mossy banks and hung in the forks of the poplar trees and gloved the pine boughs. Daniel found a twig encased in ice and this was much remarked on. Laurie babbled happily. John judged the hour-long hike a success, even if they were all frozen faces and runny noses by the time they reached the van.
It took twenty minutes for the children to thaw in front of the heater vents, slower, happily slower, than John might have thought. He took a Prilosec with his coffee, contented. But it was only eleven in the morning and he still had the rest of the day to fill.
Tess was shopping and he was glad for that, if a little puzzled. She had never been the shopping type, hated it, in fact. Claimed it made her skin dry and her bladder small. But she had been looking forward to having a day alone at the outlets since they had planned the trip, and John was glad to be able to give her this. So often he felt there was nothing he could give her, or nothing beyond a house and food and money and children, which were certainly something—from them you didn’t so much cobble together a life as you lived one—but there always seemed to be some small, almost extraneous thing missing. Something you forgot because it wasn’t immediately evident, then spent the rest of your days with it nagging at you, pulling at its insufferable absence. Except you could never say exactly what was missing.
What she gave him—besides the obvious—was a sort of human softening, a reminder of the necessity of kindness and consideration of which most people never lost sight. She had practically begged his parents to come with them, had even made certain to rent a place with an extra bedroom just in case they changed their mind at the last minute. They just smiled and refused, and John knew they were glad to see his family not in Florida with Tess’s parents but doing something together, just the immediate family rather than the family as added onto—and thus diluted—by the presence of cousins and aunts and uncles.
“Y’all go on,” his mother had said. “Just the family.”
“You two are part of our family,” Tess had replied.
And his parents had stood there smiling and shaking their heads.
“Y’all go on. You’ll be glad you did.”
And John was, he was glad.
They had spent the previous day at an indoor water park attached to the condo, John taking the boys down slide after swirling slide while Tess played with Laurie at the splash pad. They met for a lunch of pizza and Sprite and then another three hours of sliding while Tess and Laurie went back to the room and rested. Dinner was in the resort’s faux-Italian restaurant and if the food wasn’t particularly good—and it wasn’t—the lighting was blessedly soft and the children happily exhausted and in the fuzzy good tidings of wine and candlelight he had looked out at all that spread before him and saw a family that loved him with the same intensity he loved them back. He had looked out at contentment, a life worthy of envy, and in that moment felt nothing but love for the entire world, and gratitude for his being in it.
The children fell asleep in the elevator and when they were tucked into bed he and Tess took a bath together in the giant Jacuzzi tub and then made a slow and dreamy sort of love, the kind of wordless act that dissolved so seamlessly into sleep he never once thought about Erin or Karla and Kayla, or Jimmy Stone and the troubled boy John had met at Stone’s lake house hideaway.
But he thought of them now.
They were driving the eleven-mile loop past the barns and cabins, the valley and the surrounding slopes a delicate sculpture of ice and light, the sun an evident star as it rose brilliantly over the eastern mountains. Without meaning to he caught himself thinking of how much he would like to bring Erin here. He hated himself for that, but not as much as he did for thinking of Jimmy Stone. He had told the boy, Reed Sharma, about Karla’s wreck, about losing touch with Kayla, or not losing touch, because it wasn’t a thing he misplaced so much as threw away. He told him about throwing away his daughter. Stone wanted the boy to look grief in the eye—Jimmy’s words—so that he understood the idea of consequences, and John could give him that.
They made their slow way through the valley.
It seemed the single thing John could give anyone.
34.
The parking loop at Garrison Montessori was full so Reed Sharma pulled into the gravel lot at the park beside it, sat for a moment to take in the situation, and then cut the engine. It was almost three in the afternoon, the first Monday after Thanksgiving, and all the moms in their yoga pants and Skechers and vintage eyewear were gathered in a disk of sunlight near the fence, baby strollers pushed against the gate. A few women were visibly pregnant though it appeared as no more than a series of precise knots each the exact size of a soccer ball. Reed figured they all smelled of Purell.
He recognized Tess Maynard from her photographs online. She was alone in running tights, staring down at the screen of her phone, a baby carrier strapped to her chest, a tissue crumpled in one hand.
He walked to the fence and drifted over to where she stood, oblivious to him.
“Hi, excuse me,” he said. “This is where you pick up, right?”
She looked up from her phone, finger poised above the screen. Her nostrils appeared raw, pink and chapped, but it put a certain life in her face, an aliveness that felt mournfully rare.
“I’m sorry?”
“This is where you pick up children? Where they come out?” He smiled and did a sort of lazy shrug that fell apart before it ever really happened. “I’m supposed to pick up my brother’s kid. First time.”
“Oh, yeah. This is it.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course.”
“And sorry,” he said, and smiled at the white puff that was the baby’s knitted cap. “I didn’t mean to disturb her.”
“Oh, no, no
t at all. She’s . . . she’s out.”
“I just wasn’t sure if . . .”
“No, right, this is the spot. They come out of the gate there.”
“Perfect. Thank you.”
He smiled again and when she turned back to her phone he made a point not to look at her, to appear nonthreatening and a little bored, the semi-responsible younger brother doing a favor though doing it inattentively. He put his hands on the top of the white pickets and looked over the schoolyard, the garden and swing set, the arbor tangled in dormant vines. He could feel her looking at him but didn’t look back, kept his eyes forward, his lips nearly parting around a nascent smile. There were two picnic tables and a whiteboard around which were tiny handprints in bright colors and the words EDUCATION FOR PEACE. The sun shimmered, though it was a heatless light, a light without conviction.
“I just remembered,” she said. “How old is he? Or she? Sorry.”
He turned to Tess Maynard and cocked his head as if trying to comprehend.
“Your brother’s child,” she said. “Because I should have said before that the younger kids you have to go in and sign out.”
“Oh, gotcha. She’s three.”
“Three, okay. Three is Maria’s class at the end of the hall. You’ll have to sign her out.” She put her phone in her pocket and made a small adjustment to the baby carrier. “Do you know where?”
Again, he gave that shrug-thing out of which he was making high art.
“You know I’ve been here like once for a cookout,” he said.
“It’s okay. I can show you.”
“If it’s any trouble at all.”
“It’s no trouble.”
He followed her through the gate—PLEASE KEEP SHUT! LITTLE ONES ON THE LOOSE!—and into the warm building where along the walls children were beginning to line up beneath a long coat rack, each peg adorned with a name and a wallet-sized photograph. They pulled on jackets and hats and picked up backpacks. Mothers kneeled in front of their boys and girls, met them at the level of crouch to zip zippers and tug at drawstrings. But it seemed more dutiful than loving. A few held their phones, the moment more about Instagram than affection.
Tess Maynard weaved through the crowd, body sideways, arms extended as if surfing, the baby carrier riding just above the heads until a voice called to her.
“Mom,” a boy said, and from the side Reed watched her mouth widen into a smile.
She crouched onto her heels, the baby carrier like an anchor, and put both hands on the shoulders of a boy, the shoulders of her son, of John Maynard’s son. He looked to be seven or eight, brown headed, shoes tied though not in anything resembling a bow. Reed took his phone, touched the telescope icon, and without ever looking at the screen began to film them.
“Hey, baby. How was your day?”
“You’re supposed to wait outside, you know.”
“I’m just helping this nice man back to Miss Maria’s class.”
The nice man filmed Tess Maynard with her wind-burned face, then the soft sleeping face of her daughter, the clasped eyes, the tracery of blue veins. He filmed her son, he filmed John Maynard’s son, and then, with the same subtlety with which he had removed it, he put his phone back in his pocket. The image would go straight to Stone and Reed needed that, he needed Stone to see it. He needed Stone to know what he was capable of. See how long my reach, Jimmy.
“Can you find your brother and wait for me by the gate?” Tess Maynard asked her son.
“Sure.”
“It was a good day?”
“Yeah.”
“Be right out there, okay?”
She touched his face and stood, smiled at Reed.
“My son.”
“Sounds like a good boy.”
“Wally,” she said. “He is. Now let me show you.” She took a few steps, looked back and smiled patiently as another classroom emptied and the hall filled, separating Reed and Tess. “One sec,” she said.
“You know if you can just point me in the right direction I can probably find it.”
“Oh, okay. You sure?”
“Yeah, that was the tricky part, all the kids.”
“Well, you just go to the end there, and then right.”
“Thank you.”
“Miss Maria’s classroom. It’s the only one down there.”
“I really appreciate it.”
He moved past them, pausing at the end of the hall to see the woman making her slow way through a sea of children back toward the door. When she passed through it he came back down the hall, back along the coat rack until he found WALLACE MAYNARD taped above an empty peg. The coat was gone, the child was gone, but on the shelf sat a plastic grocery bag full of what appeared to be his art projects, cuttings and pastings and jagged construction paper.
He took his phone back out and filmed it all—the wall hook and printed name, the drawings of birds and large cats. Let Jimmy see it all. Let Jimmy know.
When he was finished he quietly walked back to his car and dialed Kayla.
“Hey, girl,” he said. “You still free tonight?”
35.
The first week of December it was like Tess couldn’t not be happy. John was busy at work—it was the final week of classes and all the students who had spent the semester not doing what they were supposed to be doing were suddenly panicking, suddenly in need of counseling—but in another week exams would be over and campus would be empty and he would be home for winter break. Thanksgiving had been perfect. Christmas would be even better. There was a half marathon in Chattanooga in the spring and she was thinking of registering because looking at last year’s times she felt certain she could win her age group.
One evening Daniel and Laurie both went down early and she sat for an hour with Wally and his Minecraft whales, these block creations that dived and hunted and spouted. He had posted a video on YouTube and they watched it together.
Hey, guys, so I actually forgot the title of the mod but the download stuff is below if you look down there it should work but don’t blame me if it doesn’t, k?
“This is you?” she asked. “This is your voice?”
“Yeah.”
If you look up, you see all the stuff. That up there . . . that’s, yes, awesome, that’s an angler fish up there with that angler thing and you can see how they look with those crazy teeth and all.
“What did you say, angel fish?”
“Angler fish.”
“How do you know about angler fish? Honey, you sound so grown-up, so mature.”
“Mom.”
“You’re going to be doing calculus and getting married, my grown boy.”
“Come on, Mom.”
The comments were funny and stupid and encouraging and she was proud of her son for his brilliance, his ingenuity.
StarShark123can u ride the whale?
haloboy17this is awesome. Can u ride the angler fish?
Leah_12whales don’t eat fish
“Is that true?” she asked him.
He shook his head ruefully and they laughed.
StarShark123u know theres a mod where you can ride a turtle?
She was so happy she barely noticed the Middle Eastern men around her, the ones in the malls and convenience stores. She surely didn’t allow herself to think about the man in the basement. She didn’t dare approach the possibility that his death had somehow freed her, that his headless nonexistence had somehow pushed her back into the world. That she was alive precisely because he was not.
No, no, no, no—why would she even begin to imagine such?
She was so happy, her world felt so balanced, she called her dad and promised to spend better than a week in Florida, December 23 to January 2, does that work?
“Of course, it works, honey. Frankly, I wish you’d move back.”
And was it crazy that not even that seemed crazy?
Ten days was nothing. And okay, maybe it was a rash thing to do—she hadn’t bothered running it by John; they had never stayed m
ore than four days—but if the giddy float of her life never ended—and how could it possibly ever end?—what did it matter? It would be ten or so days of carols and gifts and eggnog, and New Year’s Eve she and John could leave the children with her parents and go out and have the sort of amazing night that seemed more and more possible lately.
Tess had returned from her day—her secret day—with Kayla late and a little tipsy, and with her fingernails colored the wildest of pinks, she and John had wound up back in the Jacuzzi tub, back in the bed, making the sort of tender love that felt like the lightest falling of rain. Since then, she wasn’t thinking about the orange jumpsuit on the USB drive or why her husband kept disappearing every Saturday to Atlanta or Peach Creek or wherever it was. Might want to check with your husband on that whole relicensure thing, honey. She didn’t care about the man in the basement, not anymore, and she hardly ever caught herself standing in the living room at two in the morning, clicking.
She was so happy she called her sister in Savannah and tried to convince her to stay the week, too.
“You’ve got to be insane, Tess. You honestly told dad the twenty-third to the second? You can’t possibly make it that long.”
“I will. I am.”
“You’ve forgotten what it’s like. You’ve got this idealized view.”
“It’s Christmas!”
“You’ve got this warped idealized view. Tell me you haven’t?”
“It’s going to be great. I’m thinking all the couples could go out on New Year’s Eve to the Blue Coyote.”
“Tess—”
“You know the place at the country club? You get drunk and drive the golf carts all over?”
“Mom was afraid you were depressed, but I just think you’re crazy.”
“I want the children to have memories.”
“It’s called Lexapro.”
“Liz.”
“It’s called Wellbutrin.”
“I want us all together. Think of all the fun.”
“Think of all the crazy. Have you even called David yet?”
Her brother barely bothered to acknowledge the call. Crazy was too much trouble. He turned to practical affairs: his wife was shopping for Wally, Daniel, and Laurie. He had a bottle of Elijah Craig for John. Did she want a pair of those new Hoka running shoes, the giant orthopedic-looking things?